Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan : : The Case of Dazai Osamu / / Alan Stephen Wolfe.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Archive (pre 2000) eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Wolfe, Alan Stephen,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2014]; ©1990
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Series: Studies of the East Asian Institute ; 1077
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (280 p.)

Dazai Osamu (1909-1948) is one of Japan's most famous literary suicides, known as the earliest postwar manifestation of the genuinely alienated writer in Japan. In this first deconstructive reading of a modern Japanese novelist, Alan Wolfe draws on contemporary Western literary and cultural theories and on a knowledge of Dazai's work in the context of Japanese literary history to provide a fresh view of major texts by this important literary figure. In the process, Wolfe revises Japanese as well as Western scholarship on Dazai and discovers new connections among suicide, autobiography, alienation, and modernization. As shown here, Dazai's writings resist narrative and historical closure; while he may be said to serve the Japanese literary establishment as both romantic decadent and representative scapegoat, his texts reveal a deconstructive edge through which his posthumous status as a monument of negativity is already perceived and undone. Wolfe maintains that cultural modernization pits a Western concept of the individual as realized self and coherent subject against an Eastern absent self--and that a felt need to overcome this tension inspires the autobiographical fiction so prevalent in Japanese novels. Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan shows that Dazai's texts also resist readings that would resolve the gaps (East/West, self/other, modern/premodern) still prevalent in Japanese intellectual life.Originally published in 1990.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- Introduction. SAINT OF NEGATIVITY Introduction SAINT OF NEGATIVITY -- PART ONE: Nation and Suicidal Narrative -- Chapter One. FROM SEPPUKUTOJISATSU: SUICIDE AS NATIONAL ALLEGORY -- Chapter Two. TWO TALES OF SUICIDE: SOCIO-LITERARY COMPLICITIES IN JAPANESE MODERNIZATION -- PART TWO: Suicidal Autobiography -- Chapter Three. NOVEL, GHOSTLY, AND NEGATIVE SELVES -- Chapter Four. THE LAST OF THE I-NOVELISTS -- Chapter Five. DYING TWICE: ALLEGORIES OF IMPOSSIBILITY -- PART THREE: Japanese Litteraturicide and Postwar Rebirth -- Chapter Six. DEATHSCRIPT: SUICIDE AS POLITICAL SURVIVAL -- Chapter Seven. ALLEGORICAL UNDOINGS -- Chapter Eight. JAPANESE RESSENTIMENT -- Epilogue. POSTMODERN POSTMORTEM -- NOTES -- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX